Phaedo | Plato's dialogues summarized

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The dialogue Phaedo, subtitled On the soul, is one of Plato’s best-known and most-read dialogues. Socrates, who has been put on trial and found guilty, is currently sitting in his prison cell awaiting his impending execution, which is only a few hours away. The dialogue is retold from the perspective of Phaedo of Elis, a young philosopher who witnessed Socrates’ discussion with Cebes and Simmias. As the subtitle suggests, the dialogue is most famous for defending the notion of the immortality of the soul - its survival in after the death of the body. In addition, the dialogue contains a comprehensive formulation and defense of the doctrine of unchanging Forms which characterize Plato’s metaphysics.
Throughout the dialogue, pressed by his interlocutors and facing multiple counter-arguments, Socrates develops four arguments of the immortality of the soul. These are generally known as The cyclical argument, The theory of recollection, The affinity argument and the Argument from life (also known as the Final argument due to its position at the end of the dialogue).
1. The cyclical argument is based on the idea that change results from opposition. When something turns cold, it was warm before - so coldness comes from warmth. When a vessel made from clay dries up and hardens, it was first wet and soft. In the same way, the life of the body must come from something opposite to it, and since life decays towards death, the opposite of that would be something immortal.
2. The recollection argument supports the immortality of the soul by pointing out that men have an innate capacity to grasp truth, as when we naturally see that two plus two equals four or that A and non-A cannot both be true at the same time. From this it follows that when we acquire knowledge in this world, we in fact do nothing more than remember what our soul already knows. Properly interrogated, Cebes insists, any person can have a recollection of true knowledge. Furthermore, when we recognize qualities in objects, beauty in a beautiful sunrise or justice in a just man, we in fact access our immutable knowledge of these abstract forms such as Beauty and Justice. When we see two sticks being of equal length, for example, we are in fact employing the knowledge of equality present in our soul and we need this knowledge in order to recognize equality in the first place.
3. The affinity argument relies on the observation that the soul is resembles the unchanging and eternal forms more than it does the changing and mortal individual objects. From this it is concluded that the soul must be divine, something like the Form or Idea of life, alongside other Forms such as Beauty, Equality, Justice, and Courage.
At this point, Socrates is confronted with two counter-arguments from his interlocutor. Cebes is suggesting that the soul is similar to the harmony in a lyre, where the strings and the wood and the other parts achieve a certain sound that is harmonious. But the harmony is dependent upon the material, perishable components. For his part, Simmias is suggesting that the soul could outlive some deaths, but it can also eventually wear off after being reincarnated many times in different bodies where it is constantly associated with bodily emotions.
In response to this, Socrates puts forward the fourth argument, the argument from life.
4. The argument from life starts with the assumption that forms do not mutate or allow blending with other forms. The Even and the Uneven, the Musical and the Unmusical are fundamentally different things. It follows that since the soul always brings life to a being, it cannot have any element of death in it, will not admit to any alteration towards death, just as even numbers do not admit any alteration towards the uneven.
The dialogue ends with a rich platonic myth. Socrates, now convinced of the soul's survival after death due to completed proofs, presents a depiction of what he believes death may be like. He does so by creating a myth that draws inspiration from existing religious traditions while also incorporating innovative elements. This myth is based on a supposed revelation about the actual shape of the Earth, which is spherical and composed of three distinct atmospheres: water, air, and aether (which is purer than air). According to this myth, the souls of the deceased are judged and punished in a network of underground rivers and lakes before being reincarnated in an atmosphere appropriate to their level of purity or impurity. The least pure are relegated to water, some reside in air, while the purest live in Olympus-like dwellings in the aether.

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